After playing on TacticalGamer (www.tacticalgamer.com.au) and having a few goes with the Su-39 Frogfoot, I relived the experience with battlerecorder and noticed what I did most of the time when moving in to engage enemy ground targets. This is how it turned out:

*SL spots a target, puts an attack marker on it or lazes the target if possible.

*I close in while at 1500-2000ft.

*When I reach within 500-700m of the attack marker, I roll inverted.

*After doing that, I pull up (due to the fact I was inverted) and go into a near vertical dive.

*At 1500ft, I'll unload weapons on the attack marker, or if it's a laze, I wait until I'm closer to 1000ft and let away a laser guided missle.

*I pull up hard into the clouds again and begin regaining altitude, in what would be a 12g experience.

*I'm safely above SAM detection and engagement range, and wait for another strike to be called.

During WW2, Dive Bomber pilots and their dive bombers, would use this tactic, while not necassarily rolling inverted, it still has the same basic idea. This is too strike the enemy out of the sun or at an unpredicted area where most AA wouldn't look.
This can work in PR as you'll find most AA, whether it be stactic or mobile, will look in a 45+ angle.
You can use this to strike the enemy without him knowing what hit him and where from.
However, it has it's disadvantages, as while diving, a lock and missle shot from where you are aiming cannot be evaded properly and efficiently. In addition to this, flares will not work as well as your aircraft will be covering most of them a few seconds after you launch them. You need to do the job and get up into the skies again, if you engage an evasive manouveur during the tactic, you'll most likely stay in SAM detection range (1000ft or so) and you'll be in more danger. So for this to work you'll have to rely on the fact that the AA is not looking at you as you dive.

A tip with this tactic may be to, when you are pulling up again, deploy flares at a moderate rate (1 per second or half second) to avoid the chance of lock-on. Now that you would be out of the dive, the flares would work more efficiently.

Try this tactic out, see if it works for you and see if you can find any other advantages or disadvantages.

Cheers!

If you don't manage to kill an insurgent, don't go after him, he'll IED you.

If you don't manage to kill an insurgent, don't stay in the same place, he'll molotov you.

Dive bombing is extremely useful in BF2 and BF2 mods for a variety of reasons. First, you're much more accurate. Second, you can use weapons like air to air missiles against ground targets accurately. Third, you're much harder to hit as most people aren't as good at vertical tracking as they are at horizontal tracking which is partly due to how you interact with a mouse. Fourth, most vehicles can't aim straight up so they can't do anything about it even if they knew you were coming. Fifth, even if they could aim straight up you're a much smaller target. Sixth, you come from out of now where as most players eyes aren't aimed up so high.

You're quite right, and this is an easy tactic to use with large advantages, however it can be hard to come out of a 90 degree angle dive if you can see the ground. Most efficient of course with a spotter with a GLTD, in which case you don't need to be within visual range before firing your ordinance, and you can therefore stay above the clouds the entire time (not losing to much altitude and give AA easy pickings).

Without a spotter, however, you will need to be within visual range to, well, visualize you target. At this point, I prefer to come down at an angle of about 75-80 degrees, giving you more room for error. Otherwise I've personally found that while trying to destroy my target, you lose altitude too fast and end up pulling out of your dive quite low to the ground or hitting the ground (I've even done that before )

I prefer to use teamwork and fly at 3000 bf2 hieght units, then go down to 1100 bf2 hieght units and lock on to a lased target with a big fat 500 lb bomb and get confirmation and a thanx from who I was supporting, nothing fancy, nothing hard just right.

although when using the AGM's I go into a shallow dive plus I use a spotter which is pretty much essential